Taking A Walk Along Mayfair Memory Lane

May 19, 1996|The Morning Call by GEOFF GEHMAN, The Morning Call

Rewinding through nine years of Mayfair memories:

* 1987: An estimated 22,000 visit on the first day of the successor to Celebration, an arts-and-recreation festival in downtown Allentown. During opening ceremonies a Navy band dedicates its finale, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," to 37 sailors killed on board the U.S.S. Stark, hit the week before by Iraqi missiles. The Four Tops perform longer than scheduled, covering for missing opening act the Marvelettes. "Wildman" Steve Brill, junk-food junkie turned naturalist, finds food in black locust blossoms.

* 1988: The talk of the public-sculpture show is a junk-littered mound surrounding a pit of rosebushes. Artist Ricardo Viera says "Memories of Peace" represents the considerable effort of even remembering peace. Some viewers aren't exactly receptive. One calls the installation "a garage sale." Another suggests planting the flowers in the embankment and burying the car mufflers.

* 1989: The performance piece "An Alien Lunch: An Edible Operetta" features a marching band, aliens in blue skull caps and creator Dan Froot in black tails with chef's hat. Union Terrace buzzes to 8,000 responding to Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Residents of Georgia Sea Island, home to many descendants of slaves, perform songs, chants and other cultural rituals preceding the Civil War.

* 1990: Dancers from Zaire villages use masks, drums and bells on posteriors. Former Lovin' Spoonful member John Sebastian pinch hits for the Drifters, who arrive for a sock hop about two hours late.

* 1991: Approximately $7,500 is dropped into a donation box. A youth music concert unites former teen queen Debbie Gibson, comparative dinosaurs Poco and the Rembrandts, who hadn't yet dreamed up the "Friends" TV show theme song. Influenced by art, realistic and absurd, Harold Olejarz dons a rubberized business suit and turns himself into a portable sculpture.

* 1992: Urban Bush Women offer a dance incorporating rap and double-dutch jump roping. Performance artist Dan Hurlin plays the Dionne quintuplets, plus their father and their nurse. Joni Trump and Tim Willgruber proclaim their love for Cedar Beach Park, Mayfair and each other by marrying under a Rose Garden gazebo.

* 1993: Emily Pulham, 7, wins the pet-owner look-alike contest by wearing a tangerine dress and mimicking the mouth motions of her goldfish. Sculptor Jorge Luis Rodriguez tilts Columbus' globe with a 20-foot outline of a ship bearing 126 ceramic slaves marked for sale. The Cabaret Tent closes with a pair of eye-openers: a 7-foot-tall stilt walker dancing to the El Asere y Su Banana Band, and a Ukrainian ensemble playing "aquapolkas" to a dance floor as wet as a moat.

* 1994: To compensate for losing the City of Allentown's $37,000 grant, the festival hires less expensive acts, centralizes the donation box and raises the raffle goal from $6,500 to $10,000. Puerto Ricans and Pennsylvania Germans bond nervously in Martha Bower's commissioned dance, "The Wedding Project: For Better or En las Buenas." Attendance records are set for single day (105,000) and overall (354,000).

* 1995: Health-care workers re-enact charged emotions in a Greek-like commissioned dance inside an empty pool. Blues guitarist Lonnie Brooks and group reach nirvana by playing well after curfew; hours later band members knock on the door of a local guest vocalist to continue jamming.

After listeners drift away, after a high-school ensemble packs up, tenor saxophonist David Murray offers a half-hour primer on music and life to Edward Reiter, a 9-year-old from New Tripoli. "Play these slow," says Murray, referring to "hot" licks. "You have your whole life to speed it up."